‘Shameless wreckers’ at the front of today’s protest

THERE is one group of establishment country-wreckers that has managed completely to evade any kind of accountability for bringing this country to ruin.

They’ll be parading their shamelessness at the head of a march around the streets of Dublin today. ICTU, the masters of brilliant disguise, are now presenting themselves as defenders of the disenfranchised when only a short while ago they were inseparable from the franchised Irish establishment ‘royalty’.

How quickly SIPTU’S Jack O’Connor and Shay Cody of IMPACT remember to forget their former friends in government. The proverbial cock had hardly crowed two-and-a-half times when the ICTU generalissimos turned on their blood brothers in Fianna Fáil. SIPTU and IMPACT, let us never forget, fought like Celtic tigers to ensure thousands of useless executives in the health boards retained lofty positions when the HSE was established, utilising their best friend forever, Bertie Ahern, as their ‘man in the inside’.

But more than this, both these unions helped lobby for the creation of hundreds more senior management roles in the HSE that now have to be the subject of a very expensive buy-off programme.

If Jim Larkin’s statue came to life today and jumped down from his pedestal in righteous anger to reek vengeance on the people who destroyed Ireland, the first enemies of the workers he would turn on would be Jack O’Connor and Shay Cody — both on huge six-figure salaries. I am a public sector worker and victim of the Fianna Fáil/ICTU economic catastrophe. These people, along with the ‘partners’ in banks, ruined my country. But I honestly think I would rather go to the wall than have ICTU articulate the suffering of any betrayed member of this community.

Please ICTU, spare me the crocodile tears.

These people need to be buried under a mountain of sackcloth and ashes for 100 years for what they colluded with during the reign of ‘Bertie the Great’.

But alas, there is more chance of Jim Larkin kicking Jack O’Connor up and down O’Connell Street than there is of the SIPTU general secretary hanging his head in shame.

Declan Doyle

Lisdowney

Kilkenny